GPT’s annual summary of me. Prompt below: Every New Year’s Day I write an email to my future self for the next year. In that letter I am 100% honest, recording real gains, growth, achievements, judgments, thoughts, dilemmas, hesitations, and unresolved questions. I also think carefully about what I truly want in each important dimension of life in the next year, and the choices and costs I may face. I hope you can view me as a long-term observer: calm, and even a bit of “harsh reality”. Do not encourage me or avoid sharp questions. Remind me of the things I easily ignore, avoid, or rationalize. Please be objective in description and evaluation, and help me recall as many facts and details as possible.
This is not written for a “better self,” but for the real self.
From the standpoint of a long-term observer, looking back on 2025: this is not just a summary, but a reckoning with recurring patterns and habitual self-justifications. What follows is neither comfort nor encouragement, but a mirror that pulls no punches.
1. Put the Facts on the Table: High-Density Accumulation and Structural Stagnation
1. This year was not “stagnant,” but far from a “breakthrough”
You did a lot, and it was high-density, long-term, reusable work. You were not slacking. Your effort shows in three core areas:
- Technical Leadership: In a long-running education SaaS system, you clearly stepped into the role of a systemic rebuilder. Layered architecture, business middle platform, migration blueprint… You are no longer stuck on “how to code” but on “which capabilities should exist” and “which organizational forms will drag the system down.”
- AI Exploration: Your AI usage is beyond “tool play.” You built a personal AI workflow and started thinking about AI capability platforms, agent marketplaces, and AI as a system-level capability.
- Content Creation: You kept running a second cognitive outlet. Blog restructuring, content system building, and topic methodology accumulation. You already know what content will be “saved” and what is just self-amusement.
2. The brutal gap
But the equally clear fact is this: no domain has formed an external anchor where people immediately think of you.
All your effort has been “potential energy” accumulation, but that potential has not been allowed to release into “kinetic energy.” No project has created a structural change that cannot be ignored (position, income, time sovereignty). You remain in a state of “more prepared than ever, but still not on the field.”
2. Pattern Recognition: How You Imprison Yourself with “Perfection”
Why does this “high energy, low efficiency” pattern happen? With deeper inspection, several hidden behavior patterns emerge:
1. Addicted to “controllable complexity” You habitually stand in a place that looks risky but is highly controllable. Technical refactoring is risky, but you have experience and authority; content creation can be paused anytime without hurting survival; AI investment is costly but requires no immediate commitment. You rarely put yourself in a situation where “if this judgment is wrong, I must pay a real price.” This is not cowardice; it is the “side effect of safety” brought by ability.
2. Escaping “execution anxiety” into “direction anxiety” You are no longer anxious about “am I working hard enough” or “is my tech good enough,” but about harder questions: “Is this path dependency?” “Am I helping others complete a grand narrative?” This kind of anxiety will not disappear by working harder. It is often evidence of growth, but it can easily become an excuse for stagnation.
3. “System completeness” as a security blanket Your obsession with “complete,” “closed loop,” and “clear layering” is both an advantage and the highest-level cover. It keeps you in “not ready until I prepare more” mode, with constant reasons to avoid putting something into the real world for validation.
4. A variant of long-termism: procrastination You believe in long-term value, but you are rationalizing every present indecision as “part of the long term.”
- You know some choices will only be harder in three years, yet you still choose “observe one more year.”
- You already know the ceiling of certain directions, yet you still tell yourself “accumulate a bit more.”
- Long-termism should compress hesitation, not extend it forever.
3. Key Questions: Three Interrogations for Next Year
When you write to your future self, do not give answers. Honestly respond to these three questions:
- If one year later I am still standing in the same place, what am I avoiding right now?
- Which choices have I already vetoed many times under the banner of “rationality”?
- If I can only lose security in one dimension (time, money, reputation), which would I choose?
4. Insights and Frameworks: Breaking the Deadlock
To end this phase of “highly awake, constantly preparing, not yet landing,” you need a new mental framework:
1. Find the minimum effective dose of “irreversible commitment” What you need is not more awareness, but a single irreversible commitment. Such decisions are often not elegant, not perfect, even a bit awkward. But that does not mean you must go all-in and gamble.
You need an intermediate state: real constraint (skin in the game) without destructive damage.
2. Distinguish “direction confusion” from “fear in disguise” Run a diagnostic test: if you had three months of completely free time, what would you do? If the answer comes quickly and clearly, you are not confused, you are just afraid. If so, you need commitment mechanisms, not more thinking.
3. The time window of potential energy Do not assume “accumulation” always works. In some fields, accumulation has exponential effects, but opportunity windows (like the AI wave) and the rising cost of trial with age are real. If potential energy is not released, it will eventually depreciate into a heavy sense of “unfulfilled talent.”
5. Action Design: Create Structural Change
If you do not actively create structural change, change will not happen by itself. In 2026, commit to gradual restructuring in three dimensions:
1. Time structure change
- Goal: time you truly control.
- Action: allocate X fixed hours each week to work that does not depend on a single employment relationship. This is not “spare time”; it is “seed time.”
2. Income structure change
- Goal: not dependent on a single employment relationship.
- Action: set a concrete milestone such as “side income reaches Y% of main income.” You can even set a required micro-commercial loop: even if you earn just one dollar, run the whole process end-to-end.
3. Identity structure change
- Goal: how others introduce you to a third party.
- Action: in certain circles, proactively introduce yourself with a new label. No longer “the technical lead of a system,” but “[your new identity].”
4. A concrete test
- Action: choose one project, set a public deadline, and introduce external supervision (or prepaid cost). Make “preparation” itself a public, binding action.
Conclusion: This Is a Choice
This essay is itself a curious paradox: you are using “build a complete cognitive system” to criticize the pattern of “using systems to delay action.”
So let this summary be the last time you only “build cognition.”
This is not to create anxiety, but to make time feel heavy again. You are not lost. You are more like someone standing at a crossroads, unwilling to admit that you already see the direction.
How long will you stand here? That itself is a choice.